Russia is now the most powerful country on the planet. (…) the Russian armed forces are probably the most powerful and capable ones on earth (albeit not the largest ones) (…) Russia is the most powerful country on earth because of two things: Russia openly rejects and denounces the worldwide political, economic and ideological system the USA has imposed upon our planet since WWII and because Vladimir Putin enjoys the rock-solid support of about 80%+ of the Russian population. The biggest strength of Russia in 2017 is a moral and a political one, it is the strength of a civilization which refuses to play by the rules which the West has successfully imposed on the rest of mankind. And now that Russia has successfully “pushed back” others will inevitably follow (again, especially in Asia).

While some dismissed this as rather ridiculous hyperbole, others have asked me to explain who I can to that conclusion. I have to admit that this paragraph is somewhat ambiguous: first I make a specific claim about the capabilities of the Russian military, and then the “evidence” that I present are of a moral and political nature! No wonder that some expressed reservations about this.

Actually, the above is a good example of one of my worst weaknesses: I tend to assume that I write for people who will make the same assumptions I do, look at issues the way I look at them, and understand what is implied. My bad. So today I will try to spell out what I mean and clarify my point of view on this issue. To do this, however, there are a number of premises which I think need to be explicitly spelled out.

First, how does one measure the quality of an armed force and how can armed forces from different countries be compared?

The first thing which need to immediately get out of the way is the absolutely useless practice known as “bean counting”: counting the numbers of tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles, artillery pieces, aircraft, helicopters and ships for country A and country B and come to some conclusion about which of the two is “stronger”. This is utterly meaningless. Next, two more myths need to be debunked: high tech wins wars and big money wins wars. Since I discussed these two myths in some detail elsewhere (here) I won’t repeat it all here.

ORDER IT NOW

Next, I submit that the purpose of a military force is to achieve a specific political objective. Nobody goes to war just for the sake of war and “victory” is not a military, but a political concept. So yes, war is the continuation of politics by other means. For example, the successful deterrence of a potential aggressor should be counted as a “victory” or, at least, as a successful performance of your armed forces if their goal was to deter. The definition of “victory” can include destroying the other guy’s armed forces, of course, but it does not have to. The British did win the war in the Malvinas/Falkands even though the Argentinian forces were far from destroyed. Sometimes the purpose of war is genocide, in which case just defeating a military forces is not enough. Let’s take a recent example: according to an official statement by Vladimir Putin, the official objectives of the Russian military intervention in Syria were to 1) stabilize the legitimate authority and 2) create conditions for a political compromise. It is undeniable that the Russian armed forces fully reached this two objectives, but they did so without the need for the kind of “victory” which implies a total destruction of your enemies forces. In fact, Russia could have used nuclear weapons and carpet bombing to wipe Daesh, but that would have resulted in a political catastrophe for Russia. Would that have been a “military victory”? You tell me!

So, if the purpose of a country’s armed forces is to achieve specific and political objectives, this directly implies that saying that some country’s armed forces can do anything, anywhere and at any time is nonsense. You cannot access a military outside a very specific set of circumstances:

1) Where: Space/geographical

2) When: Time/duration

3) What: political objective

Yet, what we see, especially in the USA, is a diametrically opposite approach. It goes something like this: we have the best trained, best equipped and best armed military on earth; no country can compete with our advanced stealth bombers, nuclear submarines, our pilots are the best trained on the planet, we have advanced network-centric warfare capabilities, global strike, space based reconnaissance and intelligence, we have aircraft carriers, our Delta Force can defeat any terrorist force, we spend more money training our special forces than any other country, we have more ships than any other nation, etc. etc. etc. This means absolutely nothing. The reality is that the US military played a secondary role in WWII in the European theater and that after that the only “kinda victory” it achieved is outright embarrassing: Grenada (barely), Panama (almost unopposed). I would agree that the US military was successful in deterring a Soviet attack, but I would also immediately point out that the Soviets then also successfully deterred a US attack. Is that a victory? The truth is that China also did not suffer from a Soviet or US attack, does that mean that the Chinese successfully deterred the Soviets or the Americans? If you reply ‘yes’ then you would have to accept that they did that at a fraction of the US costs, so whose military was more effective – the US or the Chinese one? Then look at all the other US military interventions, there is a decent list here, what did those military operations really achieve. If I had to pick a “least bad one” I would reluctantly pick the Desert Storm which did liberate Kuwait from the Iraqis, but at what cost and with what consequences?!

In the vast majority of cases, when the quality of the Russian armed forces is assessed, it is always in comparison to the US armed forces. But does that make sense to compare the Russian armed forces to a military which has a long record of not achieving the specific political objectives it was given? Yes, the US armed forces are huge, bloated, they are the most expensive on the planet, the most technology-intensive and their rather mediocre actual performance is systematically obfuscated by the most powerful propaganda machine on the planet. But does any of that make them effective? I submit that far from being effective, they are fantastically wasteful and amazingly ineffective, at least from a military point of view.

Still dubious?

Okay. Let’s take the “best of the best”: the US special forces. Please name me three successful operations executed by US special forces. No, small size skirmishes against poorly trained and poorly equipped 3rd world insurgents killed in a surprise attack don’t qualify. What would be the US equivalent of, say, Operation Storm-333 or the liberation of the entire Crimean Peninsula without a single person killed? In fact, there is a reason why most Hollywood blockbusters about US special forces are based on abject defeats such as Black Hawk Down or 13 hours.

As for US high-teach, I don’t think that I need to dwell too deeply on the nightmares of the F-35 or the Zumwalt-class destroyer or explain how sloppy tactics made it possible for the Serbian Air Defenses to shoot down a super-secret and putatively “invisible” F-117A in 1999 using an ancient Soviet-era S-125 missile first deployed in 1961!

There is no Schadenfreude for me in reminding everybody of these facts. My point is to try to break the mental reflex which conditions so many people to consider the US military as some kind of measuring stick of how all the other armed forces on the planet do perform. This reflex is the result of propaganda and ignorance, not any rational reason. The same goes, by the way, for the other hyper-propagandized military – the Israeli IDF whose armored forces, pilots and infantrymen are always presented as amazingly well-trained and competent. The reality is, of course, that in 2006 the IDF could not even secure the small town of Bint Jbeil located just 2 miles from the Israeli border. For 28 days the IDF tried to wrestle the control of Bint Jbeil from second rate Hezbollah forces (Hezbollah kept its first rate forces north of the Litani river to protect Beirut) and totally failed in spite of having a huge numerical and technological superiority.

I have personally spoken to US officers who trained with the IDF and I can tell you that they were totally unimpressed. Just as Afghan guerrillas are absolutely unanimous when they say that the Soviet solider is a much better soldier than the US one.

Speaking of Afghanistan.

Do you remember that the Soviet 40th Army who was tasked with fighting the Afghan “freedom fighters” was mostly under-equipped, under-trained, and poorly supported in terms of logistics? Please read this appalling report about the sanitary conditions of the 40th Army and compare that with the 20 billion dollar per year the US spends on air-conditioning in Afghanistan and Iraq! And then compare the US and Soviet occupations in terms of performance: not only did the Soviets control the entire country during the day (at night the Afghan controlled most of the country side and the roads), they also controlled all the major cities 24/7. In contrast, the US barely holds on to Kabul and entire provinces are in the hands of the insurgents. The Soviets built hospitals, damns, airports, roads, bridges, etc. whereas the Americans built exactly nothing. And, as I already mentioned, in every interview I have seen the Afghans are unanimous: the Soviets were much tougher enemies than the Americans.

I could go on for pages and pages, but let’s stop here and simply accept that the PR image of the US (and Israeli) military has nothing to do with their actual capabilities and performance. There are things which the US military does very well (long distance deployment, submarine warfare in temperate waters, carrier operations, etc.) but their overall effectiveness and efficiency is pretty low.

So what makes the Russian armed forces so good?

For one thing, their mission, to defend Russia, is commensurate with the resources of the Russian Federation. Even if Putin wanted it, Russia does not have the capabilities to built 10 aircraft carriers, deploy hundreds of overseas bases or spend more on “defense” than the rest of mankind combined. The specific political objective given to the Russian military is quite simple: to deter or repel any attack against Russia.

Second, to accomplish this mission the Russian armed forces need to be able to strike and prevail at a maxial distance of 1000km or less from the Russian border. Official Russian military doctrine places the limits of a strategic offensive operation a bit further and include the complete defeat of enemy forces and occupation of his territory to a depth of 1200km-1500km (Война и Мир в Терминах и Определениях, Дмитрий Рогозин, Москва, Вече, 2011, p.155) but in reality this distance would be much shorter, especially in the case of a defensive counter-attack. Make no mistake, this remains a formidable task due to the immense length of the Russian border (over 20’000km of border) running over almost every imaginable type of geography, from dry deserts and mountains to the North pole region. And here is the amazing thing: the Russian armed forces are currently capable of defeating any conceivable enemy all along this perimeter. Putin himself said so recently when he declared that “We can say with certainty: We are stronger now than any potential aggressor, any!” I realize that for a mostly American audience this will sound like the typical garden variety claptrap every US officer or politician has to say at every public occasion, but in the Russian context this is something quite new: Putin had never said anything like that before. If anything, the Russian prefer to whine about numerically superior their adversaries seem to be (well, they are, numerically – which every Russian military analyst knows means nothing).

Numerically, the Russian forces are, indeed, much smaller than NATO’s or China’s. In fact, one could argue for the size of the Russian Federation, the Russian armed forces are rather small. True. But they are formidable, well-balanced in terms of capabilities and they make maximal use of the unique geographical features of Russia.

[Sidebar: Russia is a far more “northern” country than, say, Canada or Norway. Look at where the vast majority of the cities and towns in Canada or Scandinavia are located. Then look at a map of Russia and the latitudes at which the Russian cities are located. The difference is quite striking. Take the example of Novosibirsk, which in Russia is considered a southern Siberian town. It is almost at the same latitude as Edinburgh, Scotland, Grande Prairie, Alberta or Malmö in Sweden]

This is why all the equipment used by the Russian Armed Forces has to be certified operational from temperatures ranging from -50C to +50C (-58F to 122F). Most western gear can’t even operate in such extremes. Of course, the same also goes for the Russian solider who is also trained to operate in this range of temperatures.

I don’t think that there is another military out there who can claim to have such capabilities, and most definitely not the American armed forces.

Another myth which must be debunked is the one of western technological superiority. While it is true that in some specific fields the Soviets were never able to catch up with the West, microchips for example, that did not prevent them from being the first ones to deploy a large list of military technologies such as phased-array radars on interceptors, helmet-mounted sights for pilots, supercavitating underwater missiles, autoloaders on tanks, parachute deployable armored vehicles, double-hulled attack submarines, road-mobile ICBMs, etc. As a rule, western weapon systems tend to be more tech-heavy, that is true, but that is not due to a lack of Russian capabilities, but to a fundamental difference in design. In the West, weapon systems are designed by engineers who cobble together the latest technologies and then design a mission around them. In Russia, the military defines a mission and then seeks the simplest and cheapest technologies which can be used to accomplish it. This is why the Russian MiG-29 (1982) was not a “fly-by-wire” like the US F-16 (1978) but operated by “old” mechanical flight controls. I would add here that a more advanced airframe and two engines instead of one for the F-16, gave the MiG-29 a superior flight envelope. When needed, however, the Russians did use fly-by-wire, for example, on the Su-27 (1985).

Last but not least, the Russian nuclear forces are currently more modern and much more capable than the comparatively aging US nuclear triad. Even the Americans admit that.

So what does that all mean?

This means that in spite of being tasked with an immensely difficult mission, to prevail against any possible enemy along the 20’000+km of the Russian border and to a depth of 1000km, the Russian armed forces have consistently shown that they are capable of fulfilling the specific political objective of either deterring or defeating their potential enemy, be it a Wahabi insurgency (which the western pundits described as “unbeatable”), a western trained and equipped Georgian military (in spite of being numerically inferior during the crucial hours of the war and in spite of major problems and weaknesses in command and control), the disarmament of 25’000+ Ukrainian (supposedly “crack”) troops in Crimea without a single shot fired in anger and, of course, the Russian military intervention in the war in Syria were a tiny Russian force turned the tide of the war.

ORDER IT NOW

In conclusion, I want to come back to my statement about Russia being the only country which now openly dares to reject the western civilizational model and whose leader, Vladimir Putin, enjoys the support of 80%+ of the population. These two factors are crucial in the assessment of the capabilities of the Russian armed forces. Why? Because they illustrate the fact that the Russian soldiers knows exactly what he fights for (or against) and that when he is deployed somewhere, he is not deployed as a tool for Gazprom, Norilsk Nickel, Sberbank or any other Russian corporation: he knows that he is fighting for his country, his people, his culture, for their freedom and safety. Furthermore, the Russian soldier also knows that the use of military force is not the first and preferred option of his government, but the last one which is used only when all other options have been exhausted. He knows that the Russian High Command, the Kremlin and the General Staff are not hell-bent on finding some small country to beat up just to make an example and scare the others. Last but not least, the Russian solider is willing to die for his country and while executing any order. The Russians are quite aware of that and this is why the following circulated on the Runet recently:

Translation: under both photos it says “private of the US/Russian Army, under contract, deployed in a combat zone”. The bottom central text says “One of them needs to be fed, clothed, armed, paid, etc. The other one just needs to be ordered “this way” and he will execute his mission. At any cost”

At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower, I firmly believe that and I also believe that it is the “simple” infantry private who is the most important factor in a war, not the super-trained superman. In Russia they are sometimes called “makhra” – the young kids from the infantry, not good looking, not particularly macho, with no special gear or training. They are the ones who defeated the Wahabis in Chechnia, at a huge cost, but they did. They are the one which produce an amazing number of heroes who amaze their comrades and enemies with their tenacity and courage. They don’t look to good in parades and they are often forgotten. But they are the ones which defeated more empires than any other and who made Russia the biggest country on earth.

So yes, Russia currently does have the most capable armed forces on the planet. There are plenty of countries out there who also have excellent armed forces. But what makes the Russian ones unique is the scope of their capabilities which range from anti-terrorist operations to international nuclear war combined with the amazing resilience and willpower of the Russian solider. There are plenty of things the Russian military cannot do, but unlike the US armed forces, the Russian military was never designed to do anything, anywhere, anytime (aka “win two and a half wars” anywhere on the planet).

For the time being, the Russians are watching how the US cannot even take a small city like Mosul, even though it had to supplement the local forces with plenty of US and NATO “support” and they are unimpressed, to say the least. But Hollywood will surely make a great blockbuster from this embarrassing failure and there will be more medals handed out than personnel involved (this is what happened after the Grenada disaster). And the TV watching crowd will be reassured that “while the Russians did make some progress, their forces are still a far cry from their western counterparts”. Who cares?

Personally, I vote for the Swiss military as the best on the planet for accomlishing its mission: defending the territorial integrity of Switzerland. No country can top the idea that “Switzerland does not have an army, Switzerland is an army.”

Pity the Swiss authorities are permitting an invasion by aliens. But if they ever come to their senses, I have no doubt that the Swiss military will make short work of expelling the invaders.

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Sounds like something Hitler would have said. Sounds very silly person.

Yeah, German, how 'bout Carl Von Clausewitz with his: "war is an act of force to compel (our) enemy to do our will". As per "silly person" among a myriad of numerical coefficients which populate a wide range of war models (in Theory of Operational Research): from Osipov-Lanchester to Salvo model, to other, way more complex ones--morale (a derivative of will power) of the troops, their skills and knowledge are omnipresent in considerations, many of which are described by differential equations. But then again, what those military people really know, right?

I must confess I am generally sympathetic to the Saker’s opinions and that he is a rare champion of Russia within the US.
However I believe he over extended himself with his bluff and bravado concerning the pre eminence of the Russian military.
The validity of such a claim in the end can only be proven by an actual [a posteriori] military clash between the US and/ or NATO against Russia rather than by a priori considerations.
Of course it is important that every military must be able to project it combat readiness and effectiveness in order to deter adversarial adventurism.
Numbers of military units do matter in wars of attrition but military prowess matters as well.
One thing is clear, nobody dares to challenge the US military in a showdown however it seems that the American Military and it’s political leadership do not fear a showdown with Putin or the Russian military. Are they correct or are they fools? We won’t know until it’s a done deal but the Saker is correct in arguing that only an overconfident idiot would put the Russian military and it’s leadership to a test of might. Besides you don’t have nuclear weapons unless you are willing to use them. So, nobody should dare to invade Russia unless they are suicidal!! A cold war is the only possibility in the case of Russia or China for that matter.

Of course we fear a military show down with Russia and always have, as England feared a military show down when they gamed it after WW 2,the problem being the distance of course and the supply lines that it would take, and as we can see or as the EU is seeing a cold war is not working all that well, as they have lost billions in the sanctions and will continue to loose those billions as long as the follow our lead...

Why would anyone feel the need to challenge the US military when the US military is perfectly capable of grinding itself into dust (and the nation's society along with it) by waging war against inferior opponents all across the globe who cannot even begin to threaten the US anyway?

America is destroying itself (whilst being led down the path of destruction by globalists).

I predict that the greatest victory the US military will ever have is likely to be the coming suppression and destruction of the American people.

Incisive article, points out the US fixation on SF supermen, the overrated US and IDF infantry, and the idiocy of having the tools define the mission.

Colin Powell got it right: Use overwhelming force. He knew that the US is really not cut out for long guerrilla wars that need to be fought on the cheap.

Disagree that numbers don’t matter. When the gap (technological /organizational/ morale) is not very large – and the protagonists goals are kind of mirror images – quantity has a quality all its own. Perfect example – Germans vs Russians in WWII.

If you study a real military history you will recognize (as it is recognized universally) that Powell's Doctrine (so touted in US pop-media) is nothing more than re-formulation of Wehrmacht's Blitzkrieg and Soviet Deep Operations principles of concentration and thrust . Overwhelming force was and is imperative on what Germans defined as shcwerpunkt (focal point, point of pressure) to which this overwhelming force must be applied.

Personally, I vote for the Swiss military as the best on the planet for accomlishing its mission: defending the territorial integrity of Switzerland. No country can top the idea that "Switzerland does not have an army, Switzerland is an army."

Pity the Swiss authorities are permitting an invasion by aliens. But if they ever come to their senses, I have no doubt that the Swiss military will make short work of expelling the invaders.

Dontcha love the Hessians, the most agile, biddable mercenaries in history?

There is one saying: “If you don’t know which product is better, ask which one is more expensive”. That’s the motto that US believes in too. They think that because their army is the most expensive in the world it also has to be best one automatically. There is a reason why US choose cold war style confrontation with USSR versus the hot one.

What makes one soldier better than the other comes down to one fundamental question: Which one is prepared to go further, or which one is more ready to die. If you are facing an enemy one on one and if you think that your enemy values his life less than you value yours – the battle is over.

The Russians have proved how far they are prepared to go in 1941-1945 when they had to dig really, really deep (deep enough for 27 million to fit in) in order to secure victory. No one has ever done it before and no one since and it’s a big question mark how many would do it if they had to make that choice.

According to some western philosophy on the subject, the goal in any war is to have your enemy killed while you staying alive. Apparently that’s a definition of victory. But if your main goal is staying alive – and even if you achieve this, it doesn’t automatically mean that you won. You can still stay alive and lose a war, the same as that you can lose your life and still win that war, even if you never know about it. Preoccupation with staying alive might actually undermine the efforts to achieve the goal of any war – victory.

What makes one soldier better than the other comes down to one fundamental question: Which one is prepared to go further, or which one is more ready to die

Or, as Chesterton said: the soldier has to hate not so much what is in front of him, as much as love dearly what is left behind his back. Here is a monumental difference between Russian and American soldier (US soldier is a good soldier, no doubt about it)--US soldier never fought in defense of his motherland. I do not count some skirmishes in 1812 as a real war (the real one with Napoleon's invasion of Russia was on a different continent), virtually all American warfare is expeditionary, Russian record of fighting in defense of own country, however, is massive to put it mildly. It is a completely different "genetic" cultural code in warfare.

"At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower..."

Sounds like something Hitler would have said. Sounds very silly person.

Sounds like something Hitler would have said. Sounds very silly person.

Yeah, German, how ’bout Carl Von Clausewitz with his: “war is an act of force to compel (our) enemy to do our will”. As per “silly person” among a myriad of numerical coefficients which populate a wide range of war models (in Theory of Operational Research): from Osipov-Lanchester to Salvo model, to other, way more complex ones–morale (a derivative of will power) of the troops, their skills and knowledge are omnipresent in considerations, many of which are described by differential equations. But then again, what those military people really know, right?

Incisive article, points out the US fixation on SF supermen, the overrated US and IDF infantry, and the idiocy of having the tools define the mission.

Colin Powell got it right: Use overwhelming force. He knew that the US is really not cut out for long guerrilla wars that need to be fought on the cheap.

Disagree that numbers don't matter. When the gap (technological /organizational/ morale) is not very large - and the protagonists goals are kind of mirror images - quantity has a quality all its own. Perfect example - Germans vs Russians in WWII.

Colin Powell got it right: Use overwhelming force.

If you study a real military history you will recognize (as it is recognized universally) that Powell’s Doctrine (so touted in US pop-media) is nothing more than re-formulation of Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg and Soviet Deep Operations principles of concentration and thrust . Overwhelming force was and is imperative on what Germans defined as shcwerpunkt (focal point, point of pressure) to which this overwhelming force must be applied.

There is one saying: “If you don’t know which product is better, ask which one is more expensive”. That’s the motto that US believes in too. They think that because their army is the most expensive in the world it also has to be best one automatically. There is a reason why US choose cold war style confrontation with USSR versus the hot one.

What makes one soldier better than the other comes down to one fundamental question: Which one is prepared to go further, or which one is more ready to die. If you are facing an enemy one on one and if you think that your enemy values his life less than you value yours – the battle is over.

The Russians have proved how far they are prepared to go in 1941-1945 when they had to dig really, really deep (deep enough for 27 million to fit in) in order to secure victory. No one has ever done it before and no one since and it’s a big question mark how many would do it if they had to make that choice.

According to some western philosophy on the subject, the goal in any war is to have your enemy killed while you staying alive. Apparently that’s a definition of victory. But if your main goal is staying alive – and even if you achieve this, it doesn’t automatically mean that you won. You can still stay alive and lose a war, the same as that you can lose your life and still win that war, even if you never know about it. Preoccupation with staying alive might actually undermine the efforts to achieve the goal of any war - victory.

What makes one soldier better than the other comes down to one fundamental question: Which one is prepared to go further, or which one is more ready to die

Or, as Chesterton said: the soldier has to hate not so much what is in front of him, as much as love dearly what is left behind his back. Here is a monumental difference between Russian and American soldier (US soldier is a good soldier, no doubt about it)–US soldier never fought in defense of his motherland. I do not count some skirmishes in 1812 as a real war (the real one with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was on a different continent), virtually all American warfare is expeditionary, Russian record of fighting in defense of own country, however, is massive to put it mildly. It is a completely different “genetic” cultural code in warfare.

I must confess I am generally sympathetic to the Saker's opinions and that he is a rare champion of Russia within the US.However I believe he over extended himself with his bluff and bravado concerning the pre eminence of the Russian military. The validity of such a claim in the end can only be proven by an actual [a posteriori] military clash between the US and/ or NATO against Russia rather than by a priori considerations. Of course it is important that every military must be able to project it combat readiness and effectiveness in order to deter adversarial adventurism. Numbers of military units do matter in wars of attrition but military prowess matters as well.One thing is clear, nobody dares to challenge the US military in a showdown however it seems that the American Military and it's political leadership do not fear a showdown with Putin or the Russian military. Are they correct or are they fools? We won't know until it's a done deal but the Saker is correct in arguing that only an overconfident idiot would put the Russian military and it's leadership to a test of might. Besides you don't have nuclear weapons unless you are willing to use them. So, nobody should dare to invade Russia unless they are suicidal!! A cold war is the only possibility in the case of Russia or China for that matter.

Of course we fear a military show down with Russia and always have, as England feared a military show down when they gamed it after WW 2,the problem being the distance of course and the supply lines that it would take, and as we can see or as the EU is seeing a cold war is not working all that well, as they have lost billions in the sanctions and will continue to loose those billions as long as the follow our lead…

The purpose of military force is to deter aggression. By Saker's account Russia has been attacked by US proxies in its own backyard of Ukraine and Georgia. Whether Russia will be attacked by the Germans again remains to be seen.

Of course we fear a military show down with Russia and always have, as England feared a military show down when they gamed it after WW 2,the problem being the distance of course and the supply lines that it would take, and as we can see or as the EU is seeing a cold war is not working all that well, as they have lost billions in the sanctions and will continue to loose those billions as long as the follow our lead...

The purpose of military force is to deter aggression. By Saker’s account Russia has been attacked by US proxies in its own backyard of Ukraine and Georgia. Whether Russia will be attacked by the Germans again remains to be seen.

I'm a proud German-American whose kids are learning German from an early age. I wish Kaliningrad were still Koenigsberg, Dansk were still Danzig, and Alsace still Elsass.

And yes, despite my respect for Russians and their incredible toughness and loyalty -- and despite my siding much more with Russia than with the USA in the Crimean and Donbass conflicts -- I would rather that Germany have defeated the USSR back in ww2.

But, having established those extremely proGerman bona fides, let us admit that any suggestion of Germany attacking Russia is beyond absurd. Even positing it as a remote possibility shows that you are out of touch with reality.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don't have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany's population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their "men", and demanding changes in their culture.

Germans so far do not show the simple will to survive, preserve their own culture and mores, protect their own people, and dominate their own now-limited territory. I hope they do so before it is too late.

In the current world context, I am "rooting for" BOTH Germany and Russia, particular as against Islamic savages and an increasingly aggressive China.

Saker is, indeed, a dilettante. who really has no idea what he is talking about. Some examples:

...explain how sloppy tactics made it possible for the Serbian Air Defenses to shoot down a super-secret and putatively “invisible” F-117A in 1999 using an ancient Soviet-era S-125 missile first deployed in 1961!

It wasn't sloppy tactics that allowed the Serbs to bring down an F-117. It was discovered by accident that the cell phone system could indirectly detect the aircraft. Using the clues, the Serbs fired what was considered an obsolete missile to bring one down.

Just as Afghan guerrillas are absolutely unanimous when they say that the Soviet solider is a much better soldier than the US one.

And, pray tell, how long has the US been there, compared with the Soviets, and what are the casualty totals for each. I suppose because US troops were so sorry, that's why Afghans sought out US training while the Soviets were in their country.

In conclusion, I want to come back to my statement about Russia being the only country which now openly dares to reject the western civilizational model and whose leader, Vladimir Putin, enjoys the support of 80%+ of the population.

It's not true that Russia has rejected the western civilizational model. He's obviously quite ignorant of what Peter the Great introduced from the west. There has been much written about this by people other than US authors. Russian culture is different, which is expected, but civilizational patterns are simply the result of a society solving problems that must be solved collectively. The result is, you will see the same patterns in civilizations no matter what the culture.

The 80% is also laughable in a country that murders the opposition when the regime thinks there is the slightest chance they are a threat to the regime.

The bottom central text says “One of them needs to be fed, clothed, armed, paid, etc. The other one just needs to be ordered “this way” and he will execute his mission. At any cost

This is hilarious and demonstrates a grave ignorance of how a military must operate. See how long that Russian soldier is able to operate without clothing, food, equipment, or pay. The US soldier carries out his assignment as ordered, and to the best of his ability. A meme is effective only if there is truth behind it. Saker has, as he so often does, substituted his ignorance for knowledge.

The only reason Putin was able to steal Crimea without any casualties is that the Ukrainian troops were ordered not to resist as the government didn't want Crimea turned into a combat zone. Other countries have more concern for their people that Putin has. To Putin, a Russian citizen is simply part of a collective where each citizen is fungible.

At present, there is no way we can make absolute comparisons between the militaries of the world. Unless two countries go to war, you aren't going to know which has the better Armies or troops. Historically, the Russian soldier has not fared well by comparison to western troops. In WW2 alone, the Russians had nearly three times the combat deaths of Germany, and German casualties were on all fronts, not just against Russia.

Saker is just engaging in more of his chauvinistic nonsense. What is surprising, however, is that Saker is such a shill for his motherland, but is afraid to live there. That says a lot more than he cares to say about it.

The Russians have proved how far they are prepared to go in 1941-1945 when they had to dig really, really deep (deep enough for 27 million to fit in) in order to secure victory. No one has ever done it before and no one since and it’s a big question mark how many would do it if they had to make that choice.

The question here would be how much abuse a Russian soldier today can take. Back in 1942 Russian soldiers were forced to advance at a gunpoint (they were shot from behind if they didn’t). Something like that could only probably happen ever again if the enemy were deep inside Russia, which is unlikely. Can the Russian of today take as much abuse as the Russian of 1940s under a totalitarian leadership? An open question.

The NKVD agents pointing the guns at the Russian soldiers backs were not there to supplement the (lack of¬) courage by the Russians, they were there to supplement the lousy leadership which was what the Red army was left with after the purges fueled by Stalin’s paranoia in the 1930’s.

Dunno, they pretty much think that Americans driven by homomania ruled by pedophiles who want to create a genderless world, or more specifically, a world where everyone is women with different sexual equipment. They're pretty angry with us and don't want to have to live like that.

Their recruiting videos certainly seem to indicate a more -- robust -- attitude than ours, where nary a rifle is seen and the whole point of the military seems to be that of a humanitarian helping hand.

You make many interesting points,,,,but some of them fall flat on their face….like your insistence that numbers don’t matter…..Of course numbers matter . In war, numbers have always mattered and will always matter.

Can one tank really defeat forty ?…Can one jet fighter really defeat twenty ?..can one submarine really defeat ten ? can one private first class really defeat a hundred of the same , of the enemy ?

Of course not….this is stupid thinking…and you should know better.

I do think you are correct, however, that the morale of a soldier fighting to defend his homeland, is ten times greater than the soldier tasked to invade it.

This is when the “reality” of warfare transcends a soldiers “training” to embrace it.

Deep down ,everyone knows if their cause is just or not, and this inevitably shapes the enthusiasm , performance , and outcome of those in combat.

The US has failed so often ,in recent decades, because its soldiers understand they are not really fighting to defend their country, they are fighting for a lot of Bullsh#t, a paycheck, and nothing more..

American soldiers in the fields of combat, today, have no real clue what their mission is or why its meaningful…and its very clear why they feel that way…

Because their mission is stupid and has no real meaning at all.

But if you asked our servicemen to rise to the challenge of repelling an invading army…they would be……hands down….. the meanest motherf#ckers in the valley.

They would be bad ass, nasty, sons of bitches….There is no doubt in my mind.

Maybe the Korean war didn’t gain an impressive result for the US, but the US Army under Maxwell Taylor (post MacArthur) put on as good a show as it ever did in World War II. It shredded the numerically superior PLA in a series of attrition battles and small advances that put the PLA on the brink of collapse. It was ugly but it worked. There was only the question of the political endgame and potential deeper Soviet involvement preventing rescinding the standing armistice offer and rolling the PLA back to the Yalu River. But then, Vietnam did equally well against the PLA in 1979.

The Russian army has already out-produced the Pentagon in terms of conventional equipment. The system it deployed in Western Syria, the Black Sea and in Kaliningrad enabled it to scramble the communications networks of NATO, which had to abandon the surveillance of these regions.

I believe the most telling remark you made concerned the Russian soldier:

…that when he is deployed somewhere, he is not deployed as a tool for Gazprom, Norilsk Nickel, Sberbank or any other Russian corporation: he knows that he is fighting for his country, his people, his culture, for their freedom and safety.

I remember, years ago, not pursuing much on web for answers and remaining utterly puzzled to see ISIS convoys leaving areas, in completely open space, with no U.S. military air reprisal. No bombing. Also wondered, from time to time, why such a well-equipped, highly trained U.S. military couldn’t “take out” a 40,000-ISIS force. Had we no will to fight? A hesitant White House?

A year and half ago, I began reading extensively and widely on net relying more on reports outside of American news. Of course, now I think that I was amazingly stupid.

During 2016, I encountered Iraqi Army sources saying the reason we didn’t bomb an ISIS convoy leaving Mosul was so our CIA operatives, embedded with ISIS, wouldn’t be killed. So, the Iraqis bombed and destroyed the convoy. Or the many “slip-ups” of U.S. military like air strikes which enabled ISIS/DAESH to fulfill their military objectives in Syria–like dismantling a oil pipeline favorable to the Syrian Army. One of the funniest was a short video of an (apparently) ISIS fighter talking in Arabic and displaying for the video these wooden crates full of weapons and missles (with U.S. labels), which had “magically” fallen from the skies, by some terrific mistake, just for them!!! Even the guy in the video appeared rather mystified–like “what the hell?”

These same questions, which prompted my own edification, will eventually resonate within more and more people…including U.S. soldiers.

Maybe the Korean war didn't gain an impressive result for the US, but the US Army under Maxwell Taylor (post MacArthur) put on as good a show as it ever did in World War II. It shredded the numerically superior PLA in a series of attrition battles and small advances that put the PLA on the brink of collapse. It was ugly but it worked. There was only the question of the political endgame and potential deeper Soviet involvement preventing rescinding the standing armistice offer and rolling the PLA back to the Yalu River. But then, Vietnam did equally well against the PLA in 1979.

First, how does one measure the quality of an armed force and how can armed forces from different countries be compared?

Like this:

The US military would defeat the Russian military.

Like that.

The first thing which need to immediately get out of the way is the absolutely useless practice known as “bean counting”: counting the numbers of tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles, artillery pieces, aircraft, helicopters and ships for country A and country B and come to some conclusion about which of the two is “stronger”. This is utterly meaningless.

Yeah, mentioning something isn’t “getting it out of the way.” Or “debunking” it. It’s just mentioning something.

Do you get paid for this drivel?

I see no reason to read further, because I see no evidence that your logical or rhetorical abilities have improved. Won’t someone please tell me if Saker went on to dramatically improve after I stopped reading?

“At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower…”

Sounds like something Hitler would have said. Sounds very silly person.

It’s true that deficiencies of morale can be impossible to overcome with numbers. It’s also true that deficiencies of morale are pretty easy to overcome. Getting your head right or changing leadership are a lot easier than conjuring a top of the line MBT.

This doesn’t bode well for the US then. Not only is the morale of their army questionable, but they can’t seem to design a good MBT either – in case you didn’t know Abrams is a knock-off version of Leopard. Supposedly jointly developed with Germany – it’s like asking BMW to jointly develop a car with GM – how would that cooperation benefit the Germans? Anyhow, I guess Canada is one of the few countries which realized that the German Leopard 2 is better than the lousy copycat, so they never bothered with the Abrams, equipping their army with the superior Leopards. The main difference is probably the better engine (ordinary diesel) in Leopard 2 vs. the crappy gas turbine in the Abrams M1A2.

The Russians have proved how far they are prepared to go in 1941-1945 when they had to dig really, really deep (deep enough for 27 million to fit in) in order to secure victory. No one has ever done it before and no one since and it’s a big question mark how many would do it if they had to make that choice.

The question here would be how much abuse a Russian soldier today can take. Back in 1942 Russian soldiers were forced to advance at a gunpoint (they were shot from behind if they didn't). Something like that could only probably happen ever again if the enemy were deep inside Russia, which is unlikely. Can the Russian of today take as much abuse as the Russian of 1940s under a totalitarian leadership? An open question.

The NKVD agents pointing the guns at the Russian soldiers backs were not there to supplement the (lack of¬) courage by the Russians, they were there to supplement the lousy leadership which was what the Red army was left with after the purges fueled by Stalin’s paranoia in the 1930’s.

First, how does one measure the quality of an armed force and how can armed forces from different countries be compared?

Like this:

The US military would defeat the Russian military.

Like that.

The first thing which need to immediately get out of the way is the absolutely useless practice known as “bean counting”: counting the numbers of tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles, artillery pieces, aircraft, helicopters and ships for country A and country B and come to some conclusion about which of the two is “stronger”. This is utterly meaningless.

Yeah, mentioning something isn't "getting it out of the way." Or "debunking" it. It's just mentioning something.

Do you get paid for this drivel?

I see no reason to read further, because I see no evidence that your logical or rhetorical abilities have improved. Won't someone please tell me if Saker went on to dramatically improve after I stopped reading?

You’ve been watching too many movies, fool. And not a good quality ones either.

ObiWan, the hits just keep on comin'. "Reliable sources" tell me that the plan is to make 50% of the student body at the Air Force Academy female within the next couple years. (Currently, females make up about 25% of the cadets.) I wonder what the demographics are at the Russian counterpart school?

Hopefully El Perro Loco will bring this kind of thing to a screeching halt...

I must confess I am generally sympathetic to the Saker's opinions and that he is a rare champion of Russia within the US.However I believe he over extended himself with his bluff and bravado concerning the pre eminence of the Russian military. The validity of such a claim in the end can only be proven by an actual [a posteriori] military clash between the US and/ or NATO against Russia rather than by a priori considerations. Of course it is important that every military must be able to project it combat readiness and effectiveness in order to deter adversarial adventurism. Numbers of military units do matter in wars of attrition but military prowess matters as well.One thing is clear, nobody dares to challenge the US military in a showdown however it seems that the American Military and it's political leadership do not fear a showdown with Putin or the Russian military. Are they correct or are they fools? We won't know until it's a done deal but the Saker is correct in arguing that only an overconfident idiot would put the Russian military and it's leadership to a test of might. Besides you don't have nuclear weapons unless you are willing to use them. So, nobody should dare to invade Russia unless they are suicidal!! A cold war is the only possibility in the case of Russia or China for that matter.

Why would anyone feel the need to challenge the US military when the US military is perfectly capable of grinding itself into dust (and the nation’s society along with it) by waging war against inferior opponents all across the globe who cannot even begin to threaten the US anyway?

America is destroying itself (whilst being led down the path of destruction by globalists).

I predict that the greatest victory the US military will ever have is likely to be the coming suppression and destruction of the American people.

“At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower…”

Sounds like something Hitler would have said. Sounds very silly person.

It's true that deficiencies of morale can be impossible to overcome with numbers. It's also true that deficiencies of morale are pretty easy to overcome. Getting your head right or changing leadership are a lot easier than conjuring a top of the line MBT.

That's all it needs to be. That's how the US was supposed to be. Think how much better off the average US taxpayer would be without the MIC. It is very unlikely that any nation would invade the US and all of the oil and any other imports could be purchased and given out for free for all of the money paid out to the parasitic MIC, not to mention the beloved sons and daughters that have bled out in foreign lands fighting unnecessary foreign wars.

“At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower…”

Sounds like something Hitler would have said. Sounds very silly person.

It's true that deficiencies of morale can be impossible to overcome with numbers. It's also true that deficiencies of morale are pretty easy to overcome. Getting your head right or changing leadership are a lot easier than conjuring a top of the line MBT.

This doesn’t bode well for the US then. Not only is the morale of their army questionable, but they can’t seem to design a good MBT either – in case you didn’t know Abrams is a knock-off version of Leopard. Supposedly jointly developed with Germany – it’s like asking BMW to jointly develop a car with GM – how would that cooperation benefit the Germans? Anyhow, I guess Canada is one of the few countries which realized that the German Leopard 2 is better than the lousy copycat, so they never bothered with the Abrams, equipping their army with the superior Leopards. The main difference is probably the better engine (ordinary diesel) in Leopard 2 vs. the crappy gas turbine in the Abrams M1A2.

At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower….

Yes the blowhards in the French Army believed the same in 1914. It worked out very well for them.

For the time being, the Russians are watching how the US cannot even take a small city like Mosul, even though it had to supplement the local forces with plenty of US and NATO “support” and they are unimpressed, to say the least.

As proved by the fact that the eastern half of the city (incidentally the third largest in Iraq at least before Islamic State occupation) is now liberated.

The solution to countering idiotic propagandistic tripe against Russia is not idiotic propagandistic tripe against the US.

I'm sure Russian power is formidable in and around Russia. But that's about it.

That’s all it needs to be. That’s how the US was supposed to be. Think how much better off the average US taxpayer would be without the MIC. It is very unlikely that any nation would invade the US and all of the oil and any other imports could be purchased and given out for free for all of the money paid out to the parasitic MIC, not to mention the beloved sons and daughters that have bled out in foreign lands fighting unnecessary foreign wars.

Why would anyone feel the need to challenge the US military when the US military is perfectly capable of grinding itself into dust (and the nation's society along with it) by waging war against inferior opponents all across the globe who cannot even begin to threaten the US anyway?

America is destroying itself (whilst being led down the path of destruction by globalists).

I predict that the greatest victory the US military will ever have is likely to be the coming suppression and destruction of the American people.

Why do you think that the American military would willingly supress and destroy their own families, cities, friends?

The American people have begun to "smell the coffee" which explains the election of Trump. I have no idea how successful Trump will be in making America great again but the forces of globalism will continue to agitate for their one-world vision which requires that Americans undergo a huge drop in living standards and personal liberties. Once a tipping point of awareness is reached and Americans rebel en mass, the armed forces will be used against those Americans protesting. Nothing will be allowed to prevent the one-world dream/nightmare. This is why the 2nd Amendment is constantly under attack.

Please don’t judge the article by the foolish national pride. Having the most expensive toys in the military arsenal is not the criterion on which the quality of armed forces should be measured. We all know that the aerospace industry milks the national treasury with $600 toilet seats and $200 screw drivers. They are well known for budget over runs and inferior products. A good example is F35. Its production is over budget and has been delayed and the experts agree that its capabilities are over rated. It was supposed to fill each military branch’s needs. Now each branch is unhappy with it.

The problem with America is that people have been watching too many war movies and are far removed from reality. The only victories US armed forces have had are in the movies. If those movies are right then all the American armed forces need are three people. Sylvester (Rambo) Stallone, Steven Segal and Chuck Norris (Delta Force). These super heroes can single handedly defeat any enemy forces inside or outside the country.

A note to the author. Please spell check and edit your article before submitting for publication.

Iraq was not a fantasy victory. Although I'm not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival "normally." As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

I don't know if I'll go that far, but its not outside the realm of impossibility. The Evil Empire is fearsome.

This is a different story if one of the states breaks the rules and blows up all satellites in the sky, of course. Nuclear weapons, used liberally in a variety of forms and indiscriminately, might give the others a slim chance as well of effecting a different outcome.

The Russians have proved how far they are prepared to go in 1941-1945 when they had to dig really, really deep (deep enough for 27 million to fit in) in order to secure victory. No one has ever done it before and no one since and it’s a big question mark how many would do it if they had to make that choice.

The question here would be how much abuse a Russian soldier today can take. Back in 1942 Russian soldiers were forced to advance at a gunpoint (they were shot from behind if they didn't). Something like that could only probably happen ever again if the enemy were deep inside Russia, which is unlikely. Can the Russian of today take as much abuse as the Russian of 1940s under a totalitarian leadership? An open question.

Dunno, they pretty much think that Americans driven by homomania ruled by pedophiles who want to create a genderless world, or more specifically, a world where everyone is women with different sexual equipment. They’re pretty angry with us and don’t want to have to live like that.

Come-on . . . the United States doesn’t fight to win wars of today. If they won the wars, how would the military-security-industrial complex stay in existence? How would our political “representatives” finance their election campaigns without kickbacks from Israel, and the lobbyist groups representing the military etc. complex and Wall Street? America fights to perpetuate, even expand its own warfare State. Why people don’t see what’s going-on is a big mystery, except if you give allowance to people being too busy keeping-up with their lives to give the situation much thought. They simply don’t want to be bothered. Also, we have a government propaganda mainstream media that keeps alive the bogus threats that drive the wras.

Please don't judge the article by the foolish national pride. Having the most expensive toys in the military arsenal is not the criterion on which the quality of armed forces should be measured. We all know that the aerospace industry milks the national treasury with $600 toilet seats and $200 screw drivers. They are well known for budget over runs and inferior products. A good example is F35. Its production is over budget and has been delayed and the experts agree that its capabilities are over rated. It was supposed to fill each military branch's needs. Now each branch is unhappy with it.

The problem with America is that people have been watching too many war movies and are far removed from reality. The only victories US armed forces have had are in the movies. If those movies are right then all the American armed forces need are three people. Sylvester (Rambo) Stallone, Steven Segal and Chuck Norris (Delta Force). These super heroes can single handedly defeat any enemy forces inside or outside the country.

A note to the author. Please spell check and edit your article before submitting for publication.

Iraq was not a fantasy victory. Although I’m not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival “normally.” As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

I don’t know if I’ll go that far, but its not outside the realm of impossibility. The Evil Empire is fearsome.

This is a different story if one of the states breaks the rules and blows up all satellites in the sky, of course. Nuclear weapons, used liberally in a variety of forms and indiscriminately, might give the others a slim chance as well of effecting a different outcome.

You call Iraq a victory, fantasy or otherwise. The war is still going on as is the war in Afghanistan. The American public has no stomach for body bags, therefore, there never will be a conventional war. Americans like show business and hence the "shock and Awe" wars. America has not won a major war since world war II and even there the Russians did the most work.

Although I’m not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival “normally.” As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

America cannot win a war. Again look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way America can win a war is by carpet bombing the country or using nuclear weapons. America is so unprepared for a war on this continent that if some one did attack the mainland the armed forces will not be able to defend the country. Look what damage some ragheads from Saudi Arabia did on 9/11.

The Russians are a great nation, and nobody has ever beaten them in a war in any kind of permanent way.

That said, the Americans are also a great nation.

If it came down to genuine force on force, going all-out, who would win? Usually, the guys with the most men to send and money to spend. That would be the Americans.

In a purely political war, the Americans would likely not prevail. We have the ever-present fifth column Democrat news media. They are reliably in favor of whatever will weaken and enervate America, and a majority of Americans still listen to them.

I tend to assume that I write for people who will make the same assumptions I do, look at issues the way I look at them, and understand what is implied.

So basically, you assume you are preaching to the choir and don’t have to defend any of your assumptions, Saker, and your assumptions in this piece are pretty weak. I will give you one point however, and that is the Russians do not give a rat’s ass about political correctness or complete brutality in war. That is why they are sometimes able to accomplish what they attempt to do while our troops are held back by desk-humping, limp-wristed Pentagon pansies as they have been in Afghanistan. But let’s not forget, Afghanistan also defeated the Russians when they were still the Soviets. Even brutality breaks against lack of political will.

By the criteria given here, the WW2 Finnish military was the most powerful military on the planet, greater than the Red Army. The Russian military may well be qualitatively superior to the US military at this point, but when people hear “most powerful” they hear “would win a war vs any single opponent”. In a direct US-Russia war the US has a big advantage and would win any theoretical ‘level playing field’ war. Of course in reality it would not be a level playing field, with US dysfunctional leadership the war would probably be fought on terms where Russia would win (or everyone would lose).

Iraq was not a fantasy victory. Although I'm not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival "normally." As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

I don't know if I'll go that far, but its not outside the realm of impossibility. The Evil Empire is fearsome.

This is a different story if one of the states breaks the rules and blows up all satellites in the sky, of course. Nuclear weapons, used liberally in a variety of forms and indiscriminately, might give the others a slim chance as well of effecting a different outcome.

Iraq was not a fantasy victory.

You call Iraq a victory, fantasy or otherwise. The war is still going on as is the war in Afghanistan. The American public has no stomach for body bags, therefore, there never will be a conventional war. Americans like show business and hence the “shock and Awe” wars. America has not won a major war since world war II and even there the Russians did the most work.

Although I’m not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival “normally.” As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

America cannot win a war. Again look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way America can win a war is by carpet bombing the country or using nuclear weapons. America is so unprepared for a war on this continent that if some one did attack the mainland the armed forces will not be able to defend the country. Look what damage some ragheads from Saudi Arabia did on 9/11.

The American public has no stomach for body bags, therefore, there never will be a conventional war.

This isn't true. However, starting a war against countries that have no ability to harm us in the first place means that the public will be skeptical of the reason we are in the war. American troops fought well in WWI and WWII when we actually thought we were fighting a real enemy.

The Russians also got tired of sealed caskets coming home from Afghanistan.

Does anyone want to hear from a Cold War warrior? I spent 20-years in the US Air Force face-to-face with the Soviets (a.k.a. Russians) around the world — Europe, Asia, and chasing Bears off the coast of the United States. We knew our capabilities; it was our job to learn theirs. We studied their weapons and tactics. What did we learn? We learned to fear the Russians, especially the Spetsnaz. I was also stationed with the Canadians and in the field with the Germans, French, Dutch, and Japanese, and later performed as a military adviser to Saudi Arabia … which provided significant opportunities for comparison. I participated in Desert Storm I. I’ve stayed close to the scene in the last few decades as a military contractor.

My take: The US military does not understand war because we have never fought a war for survival. Its individual soldiers are substandard when it comes to discipline and training … too soft and too reliant on technology. It is getting worse. Affirmative action, feminism, and political correctness have decimated its ranks and military capabilities. We’d quickly fold against a similarly equipped, capable, and determined opponent.

I learned to respect the Germans in a one-on-one comparison of weapons, tactics, and discipline (they are natural-born soldiers). I would never want to go into the field against the Germans should they get angry again.

But we learned to fear the Russians from studying their way of war, getting opportunities for hands-on with their weapons, and occasionally going head-to-head with them. The Russians believe in massive, focused violence to achieve their military objectives. Their weapons are designed by the military rather than high-tech corporations bent on profit. They are cleverly effective and designed for combat at one-tenth the cost of our high-tech toys. They work and are easily maintained in the field. The recent success of the Russians in Syria compared to the Coalition tells it all.

As for our future: I mentioned that things are getting worse, much worse. Military discipline aside, the tales of the F-35, Zumwalt-class destroyers, and Littoral Combat Ships foretell a corrupt, Byzantine-like military barely able to function.

Saker is a little boy who never grew up. Likes to play with toy soldiers.

Saker is, indeed, a dilettante. who really has no idea what he is talking about. Some examples:

…explain how sloppy tactics made it possible for the Serbian Air Defenses to shoot down a super-secret and putatively “invisible” F-117A in 1999 using an ancient Soviet-era S-125 missile first deployed in 1961!

It wasn’t sloppy tactics that allowed the Serbs to bring down an F-117. It was discovered by accident that the cell phone system could indirectly detect the aircraft. Using the clues, the Serbs fired what was considered an obsolete missile to bring one down.

Just as Afghan guerrillas are absolutely unanimous when they say that the Soviet solider is a much better soldier than the US one.

And, pray tell, how long has the US been there, compared with the Soviets, and what are the casualty totals for each. I suppose because US troops were so sorry, that’s why Afghans sought out US training while the Soviets were in their country.

In conclusion, I want to come back to my statement about Russia being the only country which now openly dares to reject the western civilizational model and whose leader, Vladimir Putin, enjoys the support of 80%+ of the population.

It’s not true that Russia has rejected the western civilizational model. He’s obviously quite ignorant of what Peter the Great introduced from the west. There has been much written about this by people other than US authors. Russian culture is different, which is expected, but civilizational patterns are simply the result of a society solving problems that must be solved collectively. The result is, you will see the same patterns in civilizations no matter what the culture.

The 80% is also laughable in a country that murders the opposition when the regime thinks there is the slightest chance they are a threat to the regime.

The bottom central text says “One of them needs to be fed, clothed, armed, paid, etc. The other one just needs to be ordered “this way” and he will execute his mission. At any cost

This is hilarious and demonstrates a grave ignorance of how a military must operate. See how long that Russian soldier is able to operate without clothing, food, equipment, or pay. The US soldier carries out his assignment as ordered, and to the best of his ability. A meme is effective only if there is truth behind it. Saker has, as he so often does, substituted his ignorance for knowledge.

The only reason Putin was able to steal Crimea without any casualties is that the Ukrainian troops were ordered not to resist as the government didn’t want Crimea turned into a combat zone. Other countries have more concern for their people that Putin has. To Putin, a Russian citizen is simply part of a collective where each citizen is fungible.

At present, there is no way we can make absolute comparisons between the militaries of the world. Unless two countries go to war, you aren’t going to know which has the better Armies or troops. Historically, the Russian soldier has not fared well by comparison to western troops. In WW2 alone, the Russians had nearly three times the combat deaths of Germany, and German casualties were on all fronts, not just against Russia.

Saker is just engaging in more of his chauvinistic nonsense. What is surprising, however, is that Saker is such a shill for his motherland, but is afraid to live there. That says a lot more than he cares to say about it.

This is not necessarily wrong, but there are exceedingly few people less qualified to make that assessment than you.

The 80% is also laughable in a country that murders the opposition when the regime thinks there is the slightest chance they are a threat to the regime.

Such as?

The only reason Putin was able to steal Crimea without any casualties is that the Ukrainian troops were ordered not to resist as the government didn’t want Crimea turned into a combat zone.

The pre-2014 Ukrainian military was primarily deployed based on the geographic provenance of its recruits. Even if the Maidanists had given orders to open fire, in all likelihood nothing much would have changed, because virtually no Crimeans and very few residents of south Ukraine would have gone against the will of 90% of Crimeans. Especially considering that the legitimacy of the putschists was still very much under question, and even more importantly, that any such resistance would have been patently suicidal.

In WW2 alone, the Russians had nearly three times the combat deaths of Germany, and German casualties were on all fronts, not just against Russia.

According to meticulous post-Soviet archival work (G. I. Krivosheev in Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses), the total number of men (and in the Soviet case, about 1mn women) who passed through the armed forces of the USSR was 34,476,700 and through Germany’s was 21,107,000. Of these, the “irrevocable losses” (the number of soldiers who were killed in military action, went MIA, became POWs and died of non-combat causes) was 11,285,057 for the USSR, 6,231,700 for Germany, 6,923,700 for Germany and its occupied territories, and 8,649,500 for all the Axis forces on the Eastern Front. Thus, the total ratio of Soviet to Nazi military losses was 1.3:1.

In terms of total military deaths, it is true that the ratio was higher, at around 2:1, because Russians were far more humane to the Germans than the other way round.

Saker is just engaging in more of his chauvinistic nonsense. What is surprising, however, is that Saker is such a shill for his motherland, but is afraid to live there. That says a lot more than he cares to say about it.

According to his own biography, The Saker is a White emigre or something of that sort, by way of Switzerland. He presumably lived most of his life in the US and probably the vast bulk of his social and familial ties are in the US. It is almost certain he doesn't even have a Russian passport.

As a faithful reader of The Saker, you are doubtless well aware of all this, so your argumentation is not just a logical fallacy of the "love it or leave it" kind but outright dishonest.

Saker is, indeed, a dilettante. who really has no idea what he is talking about. Some examples:

...explain how sloppy tactics made it possible for the Serbian Air Defenses to shoot down a super-secret and putatively “invisible” F-117A in 1999 using an ancient Soviet-era S-125 missile first deployed in 1961!

It wasn't sloppy tactics that allowed the Serbs to bring down an F-117. It was discovered by accident that the cell phone system could indirectly detect the aircraft. Using the clues, the Serbs fired what was considered an obsolete missile to bring one down.

Just as Afghan guerrillas are absolutely unanimous when they say that the Soviet solider is a much better soldier than the US one.

And, pray tell, how long has the US been there, compared with the Soviets, and what are the casualty totals for each. I suppose because US troops were so sorry, that's why Afghans sought out US training while the Soviets were in their country.

In conclusion, I want to come back to my statement about Russia being the only country which now openly dares to reject the western civilizational model and whose leader, Vladimir Putin, enjoys the support of 80%+ of the population.

It's not true that Russia has rejected the western civilizational model. He's obviously quite ignorant of what Peter the Great introduced from the west. There has been much written about this by people other than US authors. Russian culture is different, which is expected, but civilizational patterns are simply the result of a society solving problems that must be solved collectively. The result is, you will see the same patterns in civilizations no matter what the culture.

The 80% is also laughable in a country that murders the opposition when the regime thinks there is the slightest chance they are a threat to the regime.

The bottom central text says “One of them needs to be fed, clothed, armed, paid, etc. The other one just needs to be ordered “this way” and he will execute his mission. At any cost

This is hilarious and demonstrates a grave ignorance of how a military must operate. See how long that Russian soldier is able to operate without clothing, food, equipment, or pay. The US soldier carries out his assignment as ordered, and to the best of his ability. A meme is effective only if there is truth behind it. Saker has, as he so often does, substituted his ignorance for knowledge.

The only reason Putin was able to steal Crimea without any casualties is that the Ukrainian troops were ordered not to resist as the government didn't want Crimea turned into a combat zone. Other countries have more concern for their people that Putin has. To Putin, a Russian citizen is simply part of a collective where each citizen is fungible.

At present, there is no way we can make absolute comparisons between the militaries of the world. Unless two countries go to war, you aren't going to know which has the better Armies or troops. Historically, the Russian soldier has not fared well by comparison to western troops. In WW2 alone, the Russians had nearly three times the combat deaths of Germany, and German casualties were on all fronts, not just against Russia.

Saker is just engaging in more of his chauvinistic nonsense. What is surprising, however, is that Saker is such a shill for his motherland, but is afraid to live there. That says a lot more than he cares to say about it.

Saker is, indeed, a dilettante.

This is not necessarily wrong, but there are exceedingly few people less qualified to make that assessment than you.

The 80% is also laughable in a country that murders the opposition when the regime thinks there is the slightest chance they are a threat to the regime.

Such as?

The only reason Putin was able to steal Crimea without any casualties is that the Ukrainian troops were ordered not to resist as the government didn’t want Crimea turned into a combat zone.

The pre-2014 Ukrainian military was primarily deployed based on the geographic provenance of its recruits. Even if the Maidanists had given orders to open fire, in all likelihood nothing much would have changed, because virtually no Crimeans and very few residents of south Ukraine would have gone against the will of 90% of Crimeans. Especially considering that the legitimacy of the putschists was still very much under question, and even more importantly, that any such resistance would have been patently suicidal.

In WW2 alone, the Russians had nearly three times the combat deaths of Germany, and German casualties were on all fronts, not just against Russia.

According to meticulous post-Soviet archival work (G. I. Krivosheev in Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses), the total number of men (and in the Soviet case, about 1mn women) who passed through the armed forces of the USSR was 34,476,700 and through Germany’s was 21,107,000. Of these, the “irrevocable losses” (the number of soldiers who were killed in military action, went MIA, became POWs and died of non-combat causes) was 11,285,057 for the USSR, 6,231,700 for Germany, 6,923,700 for Germany and its occupied territories, and 8,649,500 for all the Axis forces on the Eastern Front. Thus, the total ratio of Soviet to Nazi military losses was 1.3:1.

In terms of total military deaths, it is true that the ratio was higher, at around 2:1, because Russians were far more humane to the Germans than the other way round.

Saker is just engaging in more of his chauvinistic nonsense. What is surprising, however, is that Saker is such a shill for his motherland, but is afraid to live there. That says a lot more than he cares to say about it.

According to his own biography, The Saker is a White emigre or something of that sort, by way of Switzerland. He presumably lived most of his life in the US and probably the vast bulk of his social and familial ties are in the US. It is almost certain he doesn’t even have a Russian passport.

As a faithful reader of The Saker, you are doubtless well aware of all this, so your argumentation is not just a logical fallacy of the “love it or leave it” kind but outright dishonest.

"Of these, the “irrevocable losses” (the number of soldiers who were killed in military action, went MIA, became POWs and died of non-combat causes) was 11,285,057 for the USSR, 6,231,700 for Germany, 6,923,700 for Germany and its occupied territories, and 8,649,500 for all the Axis forces on the Eastern Front. Thus, the total ratio of Soviet to Nazi military losses was 1.3:1."

I have problems with the numbers. Mainly POW's and POW's that did not survive.

Best? Perhaps, perhaps not. Having at one time been the tip of the US spear, I would still like to think we were the best of the best. The more relevant question is whether or not we were the most effectively deployed, and in the 80′s that was likely to be the case, but nowadays it is hard to assert that that would hold true.

You call Iraq a victory, fantasy or otherwise. The war is still going on as is the war in Afghanistan. The American public has no stomach for body bags, therefore, there never will be a conventional war. Americans like show business and hence the "shock and Awe" wars. America has not won a major war since world war II and even there the Russians did the most work.

Although I’m not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival “normally.” As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

America cannot win a war. Again look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way America can win a war is by carpet bombing the country or using nuclear weapons. America is so unprepared for a war on this continent that if some one did attack the mainland the armed forces will not be able to defend the country. Look what damage some ragheads from Saudi Arabia did on 9/11.

“America has not won a major war since world war II and even there the Russians did the most work.”

Affirmative Action is the powerful fifth column of all America's enemies.

ObiWan, the hits just keep on comin’. “Reliable sources” tell me that the plan is to make 50% of the student body at the Air Force Academy female within the next couple years. (Currently, females make up about 25% of the cadets.) I wonder what the demographics are at the Russian counterpart school?

Hopefully El Perro Loco will bring this kind of thing to a screeching halt…

Does anyone want to hear from a Cold War warrior? I spent 20-years in the US Air Force face-to-face with the Soviets (a.k.a. Russians) around the world -- Europe, Asia, and chasing Bears off the coast of the United States. We knew our capabilities; it was our job to learn theirs. We studied their weapons and tactics. What did we learn? We learned to fear the Russians, especially the Spetsnaz. I was also stationed with the Canadians and in the field with the Germans, French, Dutch, and Japanese, and later performed as a military adviser to Saudi Arabia ... which provided significant opportunities for comparison. I participated in Desert Storm I. I've stayed close to the scene in the last few decades as a military contractor.

My take: The US military does not understand war because we have never fought a war for survival. Its individual soldiers are substandard when it comes to discipline and training ... too soft and too reliant on technology. It is getting worse. Affirmative action, feminism, and political correctness have decimated its ranks and military capabilities. We'd quickly fold against a similarly equipped, capable, and determined opponent.

I learned to respect the Germans in a one-on-one comparison of weapons, tactics, and discipline (they are natural-born soldiers). I would never want to go into the field against the Germans should they get angry again.

But we learned to fear the Russians from studying their way of war, getting opportunities for hands-on with their weapons, and occasionally going head-to-head with them. The Russians believe in massive, focused violence to achieve their military objectives. Their weapons are designed by the military rather than high-tech corporations bent on profit. They are cleverly effective and designed for combat at one-tenth the cost of our high-tech toys. They work and are easily maintained in the field. The recent success of the Russians in Syria compared to the Coalition tells it all.

As for our future: I mentioned that things are getting worse, much worse. Military discipline aside, the tales of the F-35, Zumwalt-class destroyers, and Littoral Combat Ships foretell a corrupt, Byzantine-like military barely able to function.

I fear you are right, sir. I hope and pray that things are about to change — bigly.

I tend to assume that I write for people who will make the same assumptions I do, look at issues the way I look at them, and understand what is implied.

So basically, you assume you are preaching to the choir and don't have to defend any of your assumptions, Saker, and your assumptions in this piece are pretty weak. I will give you one point however, and that is the Russians do not give a rat's ass about political correctness or complete brutality in war. That is why they are sometimes able to accomplish what they attempt to do while our troops are held back by desk-humping, limp-wristed Pentagon pansies as they have been in Afghanistan. But let's not forget, Afghanistan also defeated the Russians when they were still the Soviets. Even brutality breaks against lack of political will.

The way we have conducted operations in Iraq and Asscrackistan makes the Vietnam War look like a miracle of good planning and sound judgment.

Why do you think that the American military would willingly supress and destroy their own families, cities, friends?

The American people have begun to “smell the coffee” which explains the election of Trump. I have no idea how successful Trump will be in making America great again but the forces of globalism will continue to agitate for their one-world vision which requires that Americans undergo a huge drop in living standards and personal liberties. Once a tipping point of awareness is reached and Americans rebel en mass, the armed forces will be used against those Americans protesting. Nothing will be allowed to prevent the one-world dream/nightmare. This is why the 2nd Amendment is constantly under attack.

The Russians have proved how far they are prepared to go in 1941-1945 when they had to dig really, really deep (deep enough for 27 million to fit in) in order to secure victory. No one has ever done it before and no one since and it’s a big question mark how many would do it if they had to make that choice.

The question here would be how much abuse a Russian soldier today can take. Back in 1942 Russian soldiers were forced to advance at a gunpoint (they were shot from behind if they didn't). Something like that could only probably happen ever again if the enemy were deep inside Russia, which is unlikely. Can the Russian of today take as much abuse as the Russian of 1940s under a totalitarian leadership? An open question.

Their recruiting videos certainly seem to indicate a more — robust — attitude than ours, where nary a rifle is seen and the whole point of the military seems to be that of a humanitarian helping hand.

This doesn’t bode well for the US then. Not only is the morale of their army questionable, but they can’t seem to design a good MBT either – in case you didn’t know Abrams is a knock-off version of Leopard. Supposedly jointly developed with Germany – it’s like asking BMW to jointly develop a car with GM – how would that cooperation benefit the Germans? Anyhow, I guess Canada is one of the few countries which realized that the German Leopard 2 is better than the lousy copycat, so they never bothered with the Abrams, equipping their army with the superior Leopards. The main difference is probably the better engine (ordinary diesel) in Leopard 2 vs. the crappy gas turbine in the Abrams M1A2.

The cooperation benefited the Germans because they’ve been outsourcing their defense to us. Duh.

As for Canadian and German militaries, yes, I’m sure they’re the 2nd and 3rd most powerful on Saker’s list.

The solution to countering idiotic propagandistic tripe against Russia is not idiotic propagandistic tripe against the US.

This, my God, this. They had a sympathetic ear in me, and they blew it.

The moral is to the material as three is to one. N. Bonaparte

Behind this is the realization that the mental and spiritual is far more plastic than the material. Your gun will still be a gun tomorrow. Your morale, meanwhile, could drop so far as to render you combat ineffective (or rise to superhuman heights).

Please don’t judge the article by the foolish national pride. Having the most expensive toys in the military arsenal is not the criterion on which the quality of armed forces should be measured.

In WWII, once the Russians got their morale and leadership back together, they won with superior numbers of men and material. Their tanks were nicer, too. Germans soldiers were substantially better, though.

The Russians are a great nation, and nobody has ever beaten them in a war in any kind of permanent way.

The Mongols kicked the shit out of the Russians, and ruled them for centuries.

Afghanistan also defeated the Russians when they were still the Soviets.

This is backwards. The Russians defeated their opponents in Afghanistan, and left the country in the control of the Afghan commies. It was some time after their withdrawal from Afghanistan (years, IIRC) that Soviet aid to Afghanistan dried up, and the commies were overthrown.

I suppose this “PR loss” the Soviets suffered is merely reciprocation for the PR victory they won in Angola.

My take: The US military does not understand war because we have never fought a war for survival. Its individual soldiers are substandard when it comes to discipline and training … too soft and too reliant on technology. It is getting worse. Affirmative action, feminism, and political correctness have decimated its ranks and military capabilities. We’d quickly fold against a similarly equipped, capable, and determined opponent.

I learned to respect the Germans in a one-on-one comparison of weapons, tactics, and discipline (they are natural-born soldiers). I would never want to go into the field against the Germans should they get angry again.

That was very much a a two-waystreet. The Soviet rapes at the end of the war were informed by the ten million murdered civilians, 3-4 million murdered POWs, and countless rapes that the Germans had inflicted upon them in the previous four years. Rape, bad as it is, is much less bad than murder, so the emphasis Nazis and crypto-Nazis place upon it is sweet but unmoving.

All things considered, the Soviets did treat the Germans with exceptional humanity. The proportional response would have been to make them into chattel. Fortunately for the Germans, the USSR was ruled by Stalin, who instead sent them grain in the midst of the 1947 postwar famine while Russians starved.

By the criteria given here, the WW2 Finnish military was the most powerful military on the planet, greater than the Red Army. The Russian military may well be qualitatively superior to the US military at this point, but when people hear "most powerful" they hear "would win a war vs any single opponent". In a direct US-Russia war the US has a big advantage and would win any theoretical 'level playing field' war. Of course in reality it would not be a level playing field, with US dysfunctional leadership the war would probably be fought on terms where Russia would win (or everyone would lose).

Simon in London:

Yes, the German general staff determined that man per man the Finns were the best soldiers of World War II.

Erwin Rommel considered New Zealand troops (Kiwis) the best soldiers in the North African theater, including his own Afrika Korps, which was pretty good. The Finns, as I recall, fought mostly on the defensive, except the advances in connection with the siege of Leningrad. Not saying they weren't good though.

You call Iraq a victory, fantasy or otherwise. The war is still going on as is the war in Afghanistan. The American public has no stomach for body bags, therefore, there never will be a conventional war. Americans like show business and hence the "shock and Awe" wars. America has not won a major war since world war II and even there the Russians did the most work.

Although I’m not a huge fan of American power since the US has become the evil empire, its hard not to admit that the US would probably defeat any rival “normally.” As some people have argued, the US could probably win a conventional war against the entire world going to war with it at the same time.

America cannot win a war. Again look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way America can win a war is by carpet bombing the country or using nuclear weapons. America is so unprepared for a war on this continent that if some one did attack the mainland the armed forces will not be able to defend the country. Look what damage some ragheads from Saudi Arabia did on 9/11.

The American public has no stomach for body bags, therefore, there never will be a conventional war.

This isn’t true. However, starting a war against countries that have no ability to harm us in the first place means that the public will be skeptical of the reason we are in the war. American troops fought well in WWI and WWII when we actually thought we were fighting a real enemy.

The Russians also got tired of sealed caskets coming home from Afghanistan.

The purpose of military force is to deter aggression. By Saker's account Russia has been attacked by US proxies in its own backyard of Ukraine and Georgia. Whether Russia will be attacked by the Germans again remains to be seen.

I’m a proud German-American whose kids are learning German from an early age. I wish Kaliningrad were still Koenigsberg, Dansk were still Danzig, and Alsace still Elsass.

And yes, despite my respect for Russians and their incredible toughness and loyalty — and despite my siding much more with Russia than with the USA in the Crimean and Donbass conflicts — I would rather that Germany have defeated the USSR back in ww2.

But, having established those extremely proGerman bona fides, let us admit that any suggestion of Germany attacking Russia is beyond absurd. Even positing it as a remote possibility shows that you are out of touch with reality.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don’t have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany’s population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their “men”, and demanding changes in their culture.

Germans so far do not show the simple will to survive, preserve their own culture and mores, protect their own people, and dominate their own now-limited territory. I hope they do so before it is too late.

In the current world context, I am “rooting for” BOTH Germany and Russia, particular as against Islamic savages and an increasingly aggressive China.

The German Ostplan would have involved the killing of about eighty million Russians, Belorussians and Ukranians, mostly through starvation. Why, in light of your your present "rooting for" both Russia and Germany, do you wish for a result that would have led to the mass slaughter of a perfectly reasonable people--the Slavs? I'm mostly German myself but I definitely side with Russia in WWII.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don’t have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany’s population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their “men”, and demanding changes in their culture.

If the birthrate had remained as it was in the 40's, another war would not only have been possible , it would have been inevitable, read some Gunnar Heinsohn.

Lack of children is not only thing in Germany that makes it unfeasible for them to get into a war, and many of these are certainly deliberate like the anti nuclear power consensus. They sold off all their tanks and invited foreigners in to publicly rape their women en mass while the police stood and watched.

But Germany has to make all these costly gestures, because if it chose to do so, it could trounce Russia. Germany has some problems but so has Russia . Germany has lost some population numbers, but its productive capacity is stronger than ever.The main thing to remember is relative power in the correlation of forces between Germany and Russia is much as it ever was. Germany has the edge, though only potentially. Through geopolitical inevitability, Russia has the thankless task of stopping any state from dominating the world island. But they keep wanting to go West., and what they do is going to produce a rearmament of Germany which will convince Russia that the west is the threat and make them buildup militarily, where Germany can only see it as threatening its security, and so on. That is what Mearsheimer calls the Tragedy. Germany is doing everything you complain about because it is doing anything it takes to survive. It will rearm and fight if necessary.

This doesn’t bode well for the US then. Not only is the morale of their army questionable, but they can’t seem to design a good MBT either – in case you didn’t know Abrams is a knock-off version of Leopard. Supposedly jointly developed with Germany – it’s like asking BMW to jointly develop a car with GM – how would that cooperation benefit the Germans? Anyhow, I guess Canada is one of the few countries which realized that the German Leopard 2 is better than the lousy copycat, so they never bothered with the Abrams, equipping their army with the superior Leopards. The main difference is probably the better engine (ordinary diesel) in Leopard 2 vs. the crappy gas turbine in the Abrams M1A2.

The cooperation benefited the Germans because they've been outsourcing their defense to us. Duh.

As for Canadian and German militaries, yes, I'm sure they're the 2nd and 3rd most powerful on Saker's list.

The solution to countering idiotic propagandistic tripe against Russia is not idiotic propagandistic tripe against the US.

This, my God, this. They had a sympathetic ear in me, and they blew it.

The moral is to the material as three is to one. N. Bonaparte

Behind this is the realization that the mental and spiritual is far more plastic than the material. Your gun will still be a gun tomorrow. Your morale, meanwhile, could drop so far as to render you combat ineffective (or rise to superhuman heights).

Please don’t judge the article by the foolish national pride. Having the most expensive toys in the military arsenal is not the criterion on which the quality of armed forces should be measured.

In WWII, once the Russians got their morale and leadership back together, they won with superior numbers of men and material. Their tanks were nicer, too. Germans soldiers were substantially better, though.

The Russians are a great nation, and nobody has ever beaten them in a war in any kind of permanent way.

The Mongols kicked the shit out of the Russians, and ruled them for centuries.

Afghanistan also defeated the Russians when they were still the Soviets.

This is backwards. The Russians defeated their opponents in Afghanistan, and left the country in the control of the Afghan commies. It was some time after their withdrawal from Afghanistan (years, IIRC) that Soviet aid to Afghanistan dried up, and the commies were overthrown.

I suppose this "PR loss" the Soviets suffered is merely reciprocation for the PR victory they won in Angola.

My take: The US military does not understand war because we have never fought a war for survival. Its individual soldiers are substandard when it comes to discipline and training … too soft and too reliant on technology. It is getting worse. Affirmative action, feminism, and political correctness have decimated its ranks and military capabilities. We’d quickly fold against a similarly equipped, capable, and determined opponent.

I learned to respect the Germans in a one-on-one comparison of weapons, tactics, and discipline (they are natural-born soldiers). I would never want to go into the field against the Germans should they get angry again.

This is not necessarily wrong, but there are exceedingly few people less qualified to make that assessment than you.

The 80% is also laughable in a country that murders the opposition when the regime thinks there is the slightest chance they are a threat to the regime.

Such as?

The only reason Putin was able to steal Crimea without any casualties is that the Ukrainian troops were ordered not to resist as the government didn’t want Crimea turned into a combat zone.

The pre-2014 Ukrainian military was primarily deployed based on the geographic provenance of its recruits. Even if the Maidanists had given orders to open fire, in all likelihood nothing much would have changed, because virtually no Crimeans and very few residents of south Ukraine would have gone against the will of 90% of Crimeans. Especially considering that the legitimacy of the putschists was still very much under question, and even more importantly, that any such resistance would have been patently suicidal.

In WW2 alone, the Russians had nearly three times the combat deaths of Germany, and German casualties were on all fronts, not just against Russia.

According to meticulous post-Soviet archival work (G. I. Krivosheev in Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses), the total number of men (and in the Soviet case, about 1mn women) who passed through the armed forces of the USSR was 34,476,700 and through Germany’s was 21,107,000. Of these, the “irrevocable losses” (the number of soldiers who were killed in military action, went MIA, became POWs and died of non-combat causes) was 11,285,057 for the USSR, 6,231,700 for Germany, 6,923,700 for Germany and its occupied territories, and 8,649,500 for all the Axis forces on the Eastern Front. Thus, the total ratio of Soviet to Nazi military losses was 1.3:1.

In terms of total military deaths, it is true that the ratio was higher, at around 2:1, because Russians were far more humane to the Germans than the other way round.

Saker is just engaging in more of his chauvinistic nonsense. What is surprising, however, is that Saker is such a shill for his motherland, but is afraid to live there. That says a lot more than he cares to say about it.

According to his own biography, The Saker is a White emigre or something of that sort, by way of Switzerland. He presumably lived most of his life in the US and probably the vast bulk of his social and familial ties are in the US. It is almost certain he doesn't even have a Russian passport.

As a faithful reader of The Saker, you are doubtless well aware of all this, so your argumentation is not just a logical fallacy of the "love it or leave it" kind but outright dishonest.

“Of these, the “irrevocable losses” (the number of soldiers who were killed in military action, went MIA, became POWs and died of non-combat causes) was 11,285,057 for the USSR, 6,231,700 for Germany, 6,923,700 for Germany and its occupied territories, and 8,649,500 for all the Axis forces on the Eastern Front. Thus, the total ratio of Soviet to Nazi military losses was 1.3:1.”

I have problems with the numbers. Mainly POW’s and POW’s that did not survive.

This doesn’t bode well for the US then. Not only is the morale of their army questionable, but they can’t seem to design a good MBT either – in case you didn’t know Abrams is a knock-off version of Leopard. Supposedly jointly developed with Germany – it’s like asking BMW to jointly develop a car with GM – how would that cooperation benefit the Germans? Anyhow, I guess Canada is one of the few countries which realized that the German Leopard 2 is better than the lousy copycat, so they never bothered with the Abrams, equipping their army with the superior Leopards. The main difference is probably the better engine (ordinary diesel) in Leopard 2 vs. the crappy gas turbine in the Abrams M1A2.

The cooperation benefited the Germans because they've been outsourcing their defense to us. Duh.

As for Canadian and German militaries, yes, I'm sure they're the 2nd and 3rd most powerful on Saker's list.

The solution to countering idiotic propagandistic tripe against Russia is not idiotic propagandistic tripe against the US.

This, my God, this. They had a sympathetic ear in me, and they blew it.

The moral is to the material as three is to one. N. Bonaparte

Behind this is the realization that the mental and spiritual is far more plastic than the material. Your gun will still be a gun tomorrow. Your morale, meanwhile, could drop so far as to render you combat ineffective (or rise to superhuman heights).

Please don’t judge the article by the foolish national pride. Having the most expensive toys in the military arsenal is not the criterion on which the quality of armed forces should be measured.

In WWII, once the Russians got their morale and leadership back together, they won with superior numbers of men and material. Their tanks were nicer, too. Germans soldiers were substantially better, though.

The Russians are a great nation, and nobody has ever beaten them in a war in any kind of permanent way.

The Mongols kicked the shit out of the Russians, and ruled them for centuries.

Afghanistan also defeated the Russians when they were still the Soviets.

This is backwards. The Russians defeated their opponents in Afghanistan, and left the country in the control of the Afghan commies. It was some time after their withdrawal from Afghanistan (years, IIRC) that Soviet aid to Afghanistan dried up, and the commies were overthrown.

I suppose this "PR loss" the Soviets suffered is merely reciprocation for the PR victory they won in Angola.

My take: The US military does not understand war because we have never fought a war for survival. Its individual soldiers are substandard when it comes to discipline and training … too soft and too reliant on technology. It is getting worse. Affirmative action, feminism, and political correctness have decimated its ranks and military capabilities. We’d quickly fold against a similarly equipped, capable, and determined opponent.

I learned to respect the Germans in a one-on-one comparison of weapons, tactics, and discipline (they are natural-born soldiers). I would never want to go into the field against the Germans should they get angry again.

In terms of total military deaths, it is true that the ratio was higher, at around 2:1, because Russians were far more humane to the Germans than the other way round.

The Russians were far more into rape gangs. Humane ones, I mean.

The Russians were far more into rape gangs. Humane ones, I mean.

That was very much a a two-waystreet. The Soviet rapes at the end of the war were informed by the ten million murdered civilians, 3-4 million murdered POWs, and countless rapes that the Germans had inflicted upon them in the previous four years. Rape, bad as it is, is much less bad than murder, so the emphasis Nazis and crypto-Nazis place upon it is sweet but unmoving.

All things considered, the Soviets did treat the Germans with exceptional humanity. The proportional response would have been to make them into chattel. Fortunately for the Germans, the USSR was ruled by Stalin, who instead sent them grain in the midst of the 1947 postwar famine while Russians starved.

That was very much a a two-waystreet. The Soviet rapes at the end of the war were informed by the ten million murdered civilians, 3-4 million murdered POWs, and countless rapes that the Germans had inflicted upon them in the previous four years. Rape, bad as it is, is much less bad than murder, so the emphasis Nazis and crypto-Nazis place upon it is sweet but unmoving.

All things considered, the Soviets did treat the Germans with exceptional humanity. The proportional response would have been to make them into chattel. Fortunately for the Germans, the USSR was ruled by Stalin, who instead sent them grain in the midst of the 1947 postwar famine while Russians starved.

If my Alzheimer doesn’t fail me: around 5000 Red Army servicemen were court martialed for the rape, something like 1200 of them were executed.

That was very much a a two-waystreet. The Soviet rapes at the end of the war were informed by the ten million murdered civilians, 3-4 million murdered POWs, and countless rapes that the Germans had inflicted upon them in the previous four years. Rape, bad as it is, is much less bad than murder, so the emphasis Nazis and crypto-Nazis place upon it is sweet but unmoving.

All things considered, the Soviets did treat the Germans with exceptional humanity. The proportional response would have been to make them into chattel. Fortunately for the Germans, the USSR was ruled by Stalin, who instead sent them grain in the midst of the 1947 postwar famine while Russians starved.

Anatoly Karlin:

Maybe the Russians did treat the Germans with humanity, but I can’t go along with the “exceptional” appelation (that really sticks in my craw!).

BTW, I greatly enjoy and profit from your articles, comments and counter-comments!

Yes, the German general staff determined that man per man the Finns were the best soldiers of World War II.

Erwin Rommel considered New Zealand troops (Kiwis) the best soldiers in the North African theater, including his own Afrika Korps, which was pretty good. The Finns, as I recall, fought mostly on the defensive, except the advances in connection with the siege of Leningrad. Not saying they weren’t good though.

I'm a proud German-American whose kids are learning German from an early age. I wish Kaliningrad were still Koenigsberg, Dansk were still Danzig, and Alsace still Elsass.

And yes, despite my respect for Russians and their incredible toughness and loyalty -- and despite my siding much more with Russia than with the USA in the Crimean and Donbass conflicts -- I would rather that Germany have defeated the USSR back in ww2.

But, having established those extremely proGerman bona fides, let us admit that any suggestion of Germany attacking Russia is beyond absurd. Even positing it as a remote possibility shows that you are out of touch with reality.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don't have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany's population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their "men", and demanding changes in their culture.

Germans so far do not show the simple will to survive, preserve their own culture and mores, protect their own people, and dominate their own now-limited territory. I hope they do so before it is too late.

In the current world context, I am "rooting for" BOTH Germany and Russia, particular as against Islamic savages and an increasingly aggressive China.

The German Ostplan would have involved the killing of about eighty million Russians, Belorussians and Ukranians, mostly through starvation. Why, in light of your your present “rooting for” both Russia and Germany, do you wish for a result that would have led to the mass slaughter of a perfectly reasonable people–the Slavs? I’m mostly German myself but I definitely side with Russia in WWII.

See your points. Yes, I'd rather Germany and Russia never fought each other at all. But given that they did fight, I wouldn't exactly be pulling for the ussr.

I'm also part Slavic, for what that's worth. It was, of course, neither well-supported nor sensible for Hitler to view Slavs as he did.

Bad war, tough choice for the USA at the time re whether to intervene and on which side, and not a clear cut moral or strategic assessment, looking back, between those two powers, for us as people or as Americans. With that terrible choice, I still wouldn't side with the ussr. Don't see how their victory led to more prosperity, more freedom, or less suffering overall in the world than a German victory would have.

That was very much a a two-waystreet. The Soviet rapes at the end of the war were informed by the ten million murdered civilians, 3-4 million murdered POWs, and countless rapes that the Germans had inflicted upon them in the previous four years. Rape, bad as it is, is much less bad than murder, so the emphasis Nazis and crypto-Nazis place upon it is sweet but unmoving.

All things considered, the Soviets did treat the Germans with exceptional humanity. The proportional response would have been to make them into chattel. Fortunately for the Germans, the USSR was ruled by Stalin, who instead sent them grain in the midst of the 1947 postwar famine while Russians starved.

Ah Stalin, that great humanitarian. Done to consolidate Soviet rule over Germany, surely.

the Russian soldiers knows exactly what he fights for (or against) … he knows that he is fighting for his country, his people, his culture, for their freedom and safety.

When the Ukrainian “army” started advancing on Donbas and killing scores of civilians Putin stood by and was unable to make good on his parliamentary promise to defend ethnic Russians anywhere in the world. The incompetent, corrupt Ukrainians managed to recover most of the region at immense civilian cost. Only a half-hearted, late effort kept the remnants of Donbas under separatist rule. It’s difficult to imagine a better opportunity for defending ethnic Russians from a real aggression.

On the other hand, I fail to see why Russian young men should die in Syria. Their presence there is comparable to the presence of the Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

I'm a proud German-American whose kids are learning German from an early age. I wish Kaliningrad were still Koenigsberg, Dansk were still Danzig, and Alsace still Elsass.

And yes, despite my respect for Russians and their incredible toughness and loyalty -- and despite my siding much more with Russia than with the USA in the Crimean and Donbass conflicts -- I would rather that Germany have defeated the USSR back in ww2.

But, having established those extremely proGerman bona fides, let us admit that any suggestion of Germany attacking Russia is beyond absurd. Even positing it as a remote possibility shows that you are out of touch with reality.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don't have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany's population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their "men", and demanding changes in their culture.

Germans so far do not show the simple will to survive, preserve their own culture and mores, protect their own people, and dominate their own now-limited territory. I hope they do so before it is too late.

In the current world context, I am "rooting for" BOTH Germany and Russia, particular as against Islamic savages and an increasingly aggressive China.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don’t have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany’s population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their “men”, and demanding changes in their culture.

If the birthrate had remained as it was in the 40′s, another war would not only have been possible , it would have been inevitable, read some Gunnar Heinsohn.

Lack of children is not only thing in Germany that makes it unfeasible for them to get into a war, and many of these are certainly deliberate like the anti nuclear power consensus. They sold off all their tanks and invited foreigners in to publicly rape their women en mass while the police stood and watched.

But Germany has to make all these costly gestures, because if it chose to do so, it could trounce Russia. Germany has some problems but so has Russia . Germany has lost some population numbers, but its productive capacity is stronger than ever.The main thing to remember is relative power in the correlation of forces between Germany and Russia is much as it ever was. Germany has the edge, though only potentially. Through geopolitical inevitability, Russia has the thankless task of stopping any state from dominating the world island. But they keep wanting to go West., and what they do is going to produce a rearmament of Germany which will convince Russia that the west is the threat and make them buildup militarily, where Germany can only see it as threatening its security, and so on. That is what Mearsheimer calls the Tragedy. Germany is doing everything you complain about because it is doing anything it takes to survive. It will rearm and fight if necessary.

Absent major, currently unlikely changes in immigration policy, fertility, and mores, Germany will be an aged, fairly Islamicized, socially / culturally fractured society. I am not happy about it at all. Just saying that makes them less and less of a realistic threat to Russia.

I'd like to see both Germans and Russians having many more children and cooperating closely together to actively fight and repel Islam and deter China.

At the end of the day, the outcome of any war is decided by willpower....

Yes the blowhards in the French Army believed the same in 1914. It worked out very well for them.

For the time being, the Russians are watching how the US cannot even take a small city like Mosul, even though it had to supplement the local forces with plenty of US and NATO “support” and they are unimpressed, to say the least.

As proved by the fact that the eastern half of the city (incidentally the third largest in Iraq at least before Islamic State occupation) is now liberated.

The solution to countering idiotic propagandistic tripe against Russia is not idiotic propagandistic tripe against the US.

France in 1914 was saved from defeat by the Kaiser’s army thanks to the bravery and opferwilligheit of its soldiers, wouldn’t you agree?

The German Ostplan would have involved the killing of about eighty million Russians, Belorussians and Ukranians, mostly through starvation. Why, in light of your your present "rooting for" both Russia and Germany, do you wish for a result that would have led to the mass slaughter of a perfectly reasonable people--the Slavs? I'm mostly German myself but I definitely side with Russia in WWII.

See your points. Yes, I’d rather Germany and Russia never fought each other at all. But given that they did fight, I wouldn’t exactly be pulling for the ussr.

I’m also part Slavic, for what that’s worth. It was, of course, neither well-supported nor sensible for Hitler to view Slavs as he did.

Bad war, tough choice for the USA at the time re whether to intervene and on which side, and not a clear cut moral or strategic assessment, looking back, between those two powers, for us as people or as Americans. With that terrible choice, I still wouldn’t side with the ussr. Don’t see how their victory led to more prosperity, more freedom, or less suffering overall in the world than a German victory would have.

With that terrible choice, I still wouldn’t side with the ussr. Don’t see how their victory led to more prosperity, more freedom, or less suffering overall in the world than a German victory would have

We've seen what Soviet victory meant. It was bad. But not nearly as bad as Nazi German victory would have been.

German victory would have meant at least 100 million fewer Slavs (taking into account the tens of millions that would have been killed, and the children and grandchildren the killed would not have had), total extermination of Jews who are after all Europeans, possible eventual nuking of the Brits or the Americans, and brutal Japanese occupation of European-settled territory (Australia certainly, perhaps the US west coast or Alaska too).

Nazism wasn't some sort of pan-European movement. It was a pan-Germanic movement, most of all at the expense of other Europeans.

It takes soldiers to attack, and Germans simply don’t have children anymore. The population of Germany will be declining, perhaps precipitously. Even more so, the percentage of Germany’s population which is, well, actually GERMAN, will continue to decline, probably dangerously so, if they do not expel and exclude the Arab and North African Muslims who are colonizing their territory, raping and groping their women, intimidating their “men”, and demanding changes in their culture.

If the birthrate had remained as it was in the 40's, another war would not only have been possible , it would have been inevitable, read some Gunnar Heinsohn.

Lack of children is not only thing in Germany that makes it unfeasible for them to get into a war, and many of these are certainly deliberate like the anti nuclear power consensus. They sold off all their tanks and invited foreigners in to publicly rape their women en mass while the police stood and watched.

But Germany has to make all these costly gestures, because if it chose to do so, it could trounce Russia. Germany has some problems but so has Russia . Germany has lost some population numbers, but its productive capacity is stronger than ever.The main thing to remember is relative power in the correlation of forces between Germany and Russia is much as it ever was. Germany has the edge, though only potentially. Through geopolitical inevitability, Russia has the thankless task of stopping any state from dominating the world island. But they keep wanting to go West., and what they do is going to produce a rearmament of Germany which will convince Russia that the west is the threat and make them buildup militarily, where Germany can only see it as threatening its security, and so on. That is what Mearsheimer calls the Tragedy. Germany is doing everything you complain about because it is doing anything it takes to survive. It will rearm and fight if necessary.

Absent major, currently unlikely changes in immigration policy, fertility, and mores, Germany will be an aged, fairly Islamicized, socially / culturally fractured society. I am not happy about it at all. Just saying that makes them less and less of a realistic threat to Russia.

I’d like to see both Germans and Russians having many more children and cooperating closely together to actively fight and repel Islam and deter China.

As soon as Germany was cocooned within an alliance with no potential hostile state on its borders for the first time in history, it started to disarm. One thing that bears mention is that Germany saves itself a lot of money and gets a lot of short term cheap labour that way. German big business may be major players in the formation of current policy, because of the lack of external threat.

An alliance between Germany and Russia would be like the one of between France and Britain after the events of 1905 led to Russia being knocked out of the balance of power, made Germany a huge threat.

Germany has chosen the wrong moment to freeload on the USA.If Trump is serious Germany will have to rearm, and their migrant policy, like the abandonment of even civil nuclear power ect, will be redundant. A major change in German mores is quite possible, because the the German state is maybe acting in the interests of big business but when there is a threat Germany will continue to do what looks like offering the best chance of the German state surviving.

In the same way that Russia and Britain are natural allies in the sense of being no threat to each other but both afraid of Germany, Germany may well leapfrog and ally with China, economically at first. Brexit seems to point toward such a future. That would mean Britain and Russia versus Germany in Europe, while the US versus China on a global scale.

Absent major, currently unlikely changes in immigration policy, fertility, and mores, Germany will be an aged, fairly Islamicized, socially / culturally fractured society. I am not happy about it at all. Just saying that makes them less and less of a realistic threat to Russia.

I'd like to see both Germans and Russians having many more children and cooperating closely together to actively fight and repel Islam and deter China.

As soon as Germany was cocooned within an alliance with no potential hostile state on its borders for the first time in history, it started to disarm. One thing that bears mention is that Germany saves itself a lot of money and gets a lot of short term cheap labour that way. German big business may be major players in the formation of current policy, because of the lack of external threat.

An alliance between Germany and Russia would be like the one of between France and Britain after the events of 1905 led to Russia being knocked out of the balance of power, made Germany a huge threat.

Germany has chosen the wrong moment to freeload on the USA.If Trump is serious Germany will have to rearm, and their migrant policy, like the abandonment of even civil nuclear power ect, will be redundant. A major change in German mores is quite possible, because the the German state is maybe acting in the interests of big business but when there is a threat Germany will continue to do what looks like offering the best chance of the German state surviving.

In the same way that Russia and Britain are natural allies in the sense of being no threat to each other but both afraid of Germany, Germany may well leapfrog and ally with China, economically at first. Brexit seems to point toward such a future. That would mean Britain and Russia versus Germany in Europe, while the US versus China on a global scale.

German big business has a huge presence in China, especially Chinese manufacturing, and China is a major destination for German exports. German capital goods exported to China produce consumer goods exported to the US and elsewhere. So there already is a de facto economic alliance to a degree. Any serious rapprochement between the US and Russia that results in Germany feeling threatened and rearming may result in, as you suggest, a Sino-German Axis. This Axis would have the same disadvantage that the first Axis had in WW2 - lack of control over oil supplies, which would be dominated by the US and Russia. On the other hand, China would be more industrially and demographically significant than Imperial Japan was.

As soon as Germany was cocooned within an alliance with no potential hostile state on its borders for the first time in history, it started to disarm. One thing that bears mention is that Germany saves itself a lot of money and gets a lot of short term cheap labour that way. German big business may be major players in the formation of current policy, because of the lack of external threat.

An alliance between Germany and Russia would be like the one of between France and Britain after the events of 1905 led to Russia being knocked out of the balance of power, made Germany a huge threat.

Germany has chosen the wrong moment to freeload on the USA.If Trump is serious Germany will have to rearm, and their migrant policy, like the abandonment of even civil nuclear power ect, will be redundant. A major change in German mores is quite possible, because the the German state is maybe acting in the interests of big business but when there is a threat Germany will continue to do what looks like offering the best chance of the German state surviving.

In the same way that Russia and Britain are natural allies in the sense of being no threat to each other but both afraid of Germany, Germany may well leapfrog and ally with China, economically at first. Brexit seems to point toward such a future. That would mean Britain and Russia versus Germany in Europe, while the US versus China on a global scale.

German big business has a huge presence in China, especially Chinese manufacturing, and China is a major destination for German exports. German capital goods exported to China produce consumer goods exported to the US and elsewhere. So there already is a de facto economic alliance to a degree. Any serious rapprochement between the US and Russia that results in Germany feeling threatened and rearming may result in, as you suggest, a Sino-German Axis. This Axis would have the same disadvantage that the first Axis had in WW2 – lack of control over oil supplies, which would be dominated by the US and Russia. On the other hand, China would be more industrially and demographically significant than Imperial Japan was.

German capital goods exported to China produce consumer goods exported to the US and elsewhere

Thanks, that is a fascinating insight into an aspect of German exports I was completely oblivious to. Outsourcing, German style!

This Axis would have the same disadvantage that the first Axis had in WW2 – lack of control over oil supplies, which would be dominated by the US and Russia. On the other hand, China would be more industrially and demographically significant than Imperial Japan was.

See your points. Yes, I'd rather Germany and Russia never fought each other at all. But given that they did fight, I wouldn't exactly be pulling for the ussr.

I'm also part Slavic, for what that's worth. It was, of course, neither well-supported nor sensible for Hitler to view Slavs as he did.

Bad war, tough choice for the USA at the time re whether to intervene and on which side, and not a clear cut moral or strategic assessment, looking back, between those two powers, for us as people or as Americans. With that terrible choice, I still wouldn't side with the ussr. Don't see how their victory led to more prosperity, more freedom, or less suffering overall in the world than a German victory would have.

With that terrible choice, I still wouldn’t side with the ussr. Don’t see how their victory led to more prosperity, more freedom, or less suffering overall in the world than a German victory would have

We’ve seen what Soviet victory meant. It was bad. But not nearly as bad as Nazi German victory would have been.

German victory would have meant at least 100 million fewer Slavs (taking into account the tens of millions that would have been killed, and the children and grandchildren the killed would not have had), total extermination of Jews who are after all Europeans, possible eventual nuking of the Brits or the Americans, and brutal Japanese occupation of European-settled territory (Australia certainly, perhaps the US west coast or Alaska too).

Nazism wasn’t some sort of pan-European movement. It was a pan-Germanic movement, most of all at the expense of other Europeans.

and brutal Japanese occupation of European-settled territory (Australia certainly, perhaps the US west coast or Alaska too).

Australia maybe, if the Japanese avoided war with the USA. But there’s no plausible scenario where the Japanese occupy the mainland USA, given that Japan had only half the USA’s population and about 1/1oth the GDP (PPP). The best Japan could semi-realistically achieve was a short-lived occupation of Hawaii.

Incisive article, points out the US fixation on SF supermen, the overrated US and IDF infantry, and the idiocy of having the tools define the mission.

Colin Powell got it right: Use overwhelming force. He knew that the US is really not cut out for long guerrilla wars that need to be fought on the cheap.

Disagree that numbers don't matter. When the gap (technological /organizational/ morale) is not very large - and the protagonists goals are kind of mirror images - quantity has a quality all its own. Perfect example - Germans vs Russians in WWII.

German big business has a huge presence in China, especially Chinese manufacturing, and China is a major destination for German exports. German capital goods exported to China produce consumer goods exported to the US and elsewhere. So there already is a de facto economic alliance to a degree. Any serious rapprochement between the US and Russia that results in Germany feeling threatened and rearming may result in, as you suggest, a Sino-German Axis. This Axis would have the same disadvantage that the first Axis had in WW2 - lack of control over oil supplies, which would be dominated by the US and Russia. On the other hand, China would be more industrially and demographically significant than Imperial Japan was.

German capital goods exported to China produce consumer goods exported to the US and elsewhere

Thanks, that is a fascinating insight into an aspect of German exports I was completely oblivious to. Outsourcing, German style!

This Axis would have the same disadvantage that the first Axis had in WW2 – lack of control over oil supplies, which would be dominated by the US and Russia. On the other hand, China would be more industrially and demographically significant than Imperial Japan was.

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